


beauty is cast by the sea

by kyrilu



Category: Aquaman (2018)
Genre: M/M, Mentor/Protégé, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 10:17:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17262437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: He is no longer the infant that Vulko saw in Atlanna’s arms, flanked by fish, lulled by orca song.





	beauty is cast by the sea

**Author's Note:**

> And I wondered as you clasped  
> your shoulder-strap  
> at the strength of your wrist  
> and the turn of your young fingers,  
> and the lift of your shorn locks,  
> and the bronze  
> of your sun-burnt neck.
> 
> -Loss, H.D.

 

I.

“On the day you were born,” he tells Arthur, “creatures of the sea were drawn to your father’s lighthouse.”

He tells Arthur:  The creatures hailed from every kingdom. Schools of fish gathered together, their bright scales bringing color to the surrounding waters. Dolphins frolicked and leapt, letting out joyous little clicks. Mantas rays and eels and jellyfish glided smoothly across the waves. Sharks circled the coast, sleek and formidable.

With the lighthouse keeper by her side, Atlanna had walked onto the surf and cried and laughed at the sight of it all, her stomach swollen and her forehead covered in sweat. Then she had submerged herself into the swirling ocean and given birth to him there. The first breath he took was brine.

And for him, the whales sang.

“Oh,” Arthur says. He’s sitting on the sand next to Vulko, his arms folded across his knees, a boy with sunkissed skin and curls sweeping over his forehead. “Like _The Lion King._ ”

 

II.

Vulko teaches Arthur about the beasts of the sea as they walk along the beach. He describes krakens that sink surface-dwellers’ ships and dragons that summon storms.

He does not mention the Trench.

“Dragons?” Arthur asks. “They’re real--? Flying and breathing fire and everything?”

“Some can fly, some cannot,” Vulko says. “They do not breathe fire.”

He has seen dragons when he was younger, while exploring the seas with the then-princess Atlanna. He’d cautioned her not to go, reminding her that the dragons were not dumb animals, but intelligent beings who surface-dwellers considered their gods.

Yet she was wild and stubborn, and she’d tossed her head, her long white hair suspended in the water. _Nuidis_ , she said, _don’t tell me that you’re afraid._

“I want to ride a dragon,” Arthur says. He looks so much like his mother, his eyes bright and determined. He has already mounted the backs of sharks and dolphins, his palm extended like a supplication, and they’d let him climb astride.

Vulko says, “I’m sure you will, one day.”

Arthur smiles. He stops for a second to pick up a piece of surface-dweller trash on the sand, stuffing it into his swimming trunks pocket. And then he tells Vulko about his day. He is in the swim team at his school, and he’d won most of his races - “I’m holding back a little, don’t worry” - and he has a sharp chemical scent on his skin that isn’t the same as salt.

Vulko listens, offering encouragement and commentary.

He thinks: He doesn’t know the exact moment when he realized that Arthur would be _his_ king. This duty was borne out of obligation and affection, but it has taken shape into something greater.

He teaches Arthur how to swim, how to fight, how to survive in the depths of the deep. He tells him stories and legends and myths, believing Arthur is one, will become one.

Once, he had lightheartedly made Arthur a crown out of seaweed washed on the shore, a clumsy boy-size circlet that nested on Arthur’s locks of golden brown, and all he could think was _I wish I could give you a crown of gold._

Perhaps it is unfair to Orm, but Vulko never could see in him what he sees in Arthur. Orm is a slender spoiled boy who takes his kinghood for granted, who emulates his brutal father, who doesn’t look beyond the ocean’s surface. Orm is nothing like Arthur, who walks in between the land and the sea under the shining sun, who wants to fly on the backs of dragons and looks at Vulko with so much light in his eyes, it’s blinding.

 

III.

When Arthur is seventeen years old, he hands Vulko a bottle of surface-dweller alcohol, grinning cheekily.

“Drink with me, Vulko,” he says.

Vulko examines it dubiously. He is aware that Thomas Curry is fond of drinking and introduced Atlanna to beer - Atlanna had told him, before she was sent to the Trench, reminiscing about the lighthouse keeper she still loved. Thus, it isn’t a surprise at all that Arthur’s father has been allowing his son to drink before the surface-dweller mandated age of eighteen.

Vulko is unsure how to react. He is caught in the strange position of being Arthur’s mentor, and perhaps - a friend, a confidant. While he hasn’t usurped Thomas Curry’s position as a father, he knows that there is a hole that he fills in Arthur’s life: he holds the keys to Arthur’s heritage and a connection to the sea.

But it is only one bottle, after all, and Vulko relents and takes a sip.

“Have you drank before?” Arthur asks him. His face is slightly flushed - Vulko suspects that he had already been inebriated before he came down to the beach.

“Of course I have,” Vulko says, as he tries to adjust to the strong and sour taste of beer. “Sometimes there are casks of wine on sunken ships. We Atlanteans were told by our parents to never consume old surface-dweller drink, but…”

“Teenagers will be teenagers, even underwater.”

“Indeed.”

They are silent for a couple of minutes, swigging beer and watching the tide. Vulko feels his own cheeks beginning to warm, and a sensation of headiness creeping in. He realizes that Arthur’s eyes are on him, and Arthur is smiling at him widely.

“So were you a rebellious merman teen?” Arthur says. “Is there an underwater equivalent to - drugs? Smoking?”

“There are certain seagrasses that produce intoxicating effects,” Vulko says. “And I was never quite that rebellious. I was mostly - studying, when I was young.” Studying politics and attempting to keep Atlanna out of trouble, to be more precise.

“Hmm, sounds about right,” Arthur says. He wiggles his toes in the sand, then whistles, and a crab crawls up on his ankle. It doesn’t pinch him, just dances across his bare skin.

He says, “You know - the first time I got smashed, I didn’t have much of a tolerance. It was about a year ago, I drank a little with some of my friends, and I couldn’t control… this, whatever this is. The fish in Alan’s goldfish bowl were going crazy, and there was a crab or two coming through the windows. I told them it must’ve been an infestation.”

Vulko can’t help but snort at the mental image.

“I made the crabs go away!” Arthur said, shaking his beer bottle at Vulko. “I learned my lesson. It’s still weird, though, this Dr. Doolitle superpower.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

Arthur tells Vulko about a movie that he had watched as a child, and Vulko half-listens. He’s always bemused at Arthur’s references to television shows and video games and other strange things, but he supposes that’s what life is like as a surface-dweller.

“You shouldn’t regret having this power,” Vulko says, and he feels compelled to touch Arthur’s right hand. “You are my king.”

He isn’t thinking straight - not thinking clearly - and his head feels like it’s spinning. It’s like the immersion from air to sea, back home again to familiarity, where he can truly _breathe_ , and he looks at Arthur’s eyes and Arthur’s hair and Arthur’s mouth and Arthur’s throat, this boy blessed by the shore and the sea and the sun--

Like a sharp sudden shock, he pulls his hand away from Arthur’s.

“I’m not a king,” Arthur says, with a laugh. “Atlantis doesn’t want a drunk half-human brat, and besides, I don’t think I want much to do with them, either. No underwater video games, right?”

He says it jokingly, but there’s something shadowed in his eyes. Vulko merely sighs and tries to forget about the impression of Arthur’s hand against his.

 

IV.

Arthur is becoming a man. He trains fervently with his mother’s quindent. He explores the seas. He converses with a variety of sea creatures. He grows and he learns and he drinks and he laughs.

He is no longer the infant that Vulko saw in Atlanna’s arms, flanked by fish, lulled by orca song.

It becomes harder to ignore this. One evening, Arthur walks to the beach with a tattoo on his arm - a pattern of triangular shark teeth - and then he gets another and another and another. Vulko dreams of touching the black ink with his fingertips. He dreams of tracing the trident on Arthur’s chest and calling him, _my king._

 

V.

This is something that Vulko does not know. One day, Orm follows Vulko from the Kingdom of Atlantis, and he sees everything. He sees his half-brother clashing blades with his counselor - and he sees the steely expectation that Vulko has laid upon Arthur Curry’s shoulders.

Vulko looks at Arthur differently than how he looks at Orm.

In a way, it’s crushing - Vulko tutored Orm ever since he was a child, reciting lessons about politics that Orm dutifully absorbed and memorized. Vulko had even comforted him after Atlanna’s death. Even though Orm has always thought Vulko weak compared to his father, it had helped, Vulko’s calm guidance and understanding. Nobody was supposed to mourn - for it was the king who had ordered her sacrifice - yet Orm had cried and hated his half-brother, and he’d hated himself, too, for not being able to save his own mother.

Vulko had laid a gentle hand on his shoulder and told him to be strong.

But it truly didn’t mean anything, did it? Orm sees the twisted pained desire in Vulko’s eyes, and how he smiles when he looks at Arthur. It’s disgusting.

Orm thinks: Fine. Let Vulko keep his mongrel pet. I am, and always will be, the true king.

 

VI.

Vulko thinks: It isn’t enough, for Arthur to merely be a hero.

He studies archeological plans and commissions expeditions, tracking down the path to King Atlan’s trident. This is the fulfillment of his long-ago promise - I will give him a crown, I will give him kinghood - and he holds it close to his heart and longs for the day it will become reality.

He still wonders what it would be like, if he’d kissed him, that day when Arthur was seventeen and intoxicated. If he had closed his fingers around Arthur’s wrist and held him down against the sand, threading his other hand in Arthur’s curly hair. He would taste like beer and like brine, and the crab perched on his muscled legs would scuttle away. How would it sound, the sound of his name, _Nuidis,_ from Arthur’s mouth--

He knows that it’s something that he can never have.

Instead, he sends Arthur out on a mission, and when Arthur emerges, trident in hand, the sea roiling around him like it bows for him and only him, Vulko knows that he’s succeeded.

He thinks: I have made him a god.

**Author's Note:**

> (This is super indulgent and pretentious and intentionally kinda creepy and not what I usually write. I haven't even watched Justice League. But I wanted to try something new and I felt inspired, so.)


End file.
